After decades among Hollywood's most respected actors, Jack Nicholson has become a movie icon on a par with such old-time stars as Humphrey Bogart or John Wayne. His 12 Oscar nominations run second only to Meryl Streep's 13. He has won the trophy three times, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, Terms of Endearment in 1983, and As Good as It Gets in 1997.

Nicholson thought he had a fairly normal upbringing, with a hard-working mother and a hard-drinking father who sometimes took young Jack to the movies, sometimes to the bar. But like the plot of a good Nicholson movie, nothing was what it seemed. The girl Nicholson thought was his sister was actually his mother, who had become pregnant in high school. The woman he thought was his mother was really his grandmother. And in a heartwrenching twist to the tale, Nicholson says he never knew any of this until he became famous -- after both women were dead -- when Time Magazine published an exposé of his past.

In his teens, Nicholson was a paradox in school. He was voted "most optimistic" in his class -- and "most pessimistic." He was a troublemaker, always being sent to the principal's office for swearing, smoking, talking back to teachers, or pranks and practical jokes. But he was also a straight-A student. Smart -- but subversive, in keeping with what was to follow.

When he first came to Hollywood, Nicholson worked as an office boy, delivering packages and flirting with the secretaries at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by day, and spending his evenings in acting class or on stage in local plays. He was soon hired by moviemaking tightwad Roger Corman, who gave Nicholson his first film work -- the title role in The Cry Baby Killer, playing a juvenile delinquent who thinks he can get out of trouble by taking hostages.

He worked in several more movies for Corman, most notably the original Little Shop of Horrors, where Nicholson played the masochistic dental patient who requested, "No novocaine. It dulls the senses." By the mid-1960s Nicholson was a familiar face in low-budget films, a semi-regular on TV's Dr Kildare with Richard Chamberlain, and a frequent user of illegal drugs.

In a long-running burst of creativity, Nicholson wrote numerous screenplays in the mid-1960s, of which four were filmed, and all are worth the trouble of seeking out. Thunder Island is a political thriller set in a banana republic, Flight to Fury is an enjoyable treasure hunt set in the Philippines, Ride in the Whirlwind is a stark, thoughtful, existential western, and The Trip has to be seen to be believed. It is the best of a short-lived genre of 1960s and '70s drug movies, with Peter Fonda playing a depressed director of TV commercials who decides to try LSD and takes the audience with him. Nicholson wrote expertly of the drug's effect, and his script wastes little effort on the now-standard "say no to drugs" moralizing. He wrote a role for himself as Fonda's friend and 'guide' to the paths of altered consciousness, but Nicholson did not yet have the clout to make any demands, so the role went to Bruce Dern instead.

When The Monkees saw their sitcom cancelled in 1968, the unemployed band made a surreal, almost psychedelic movie, Head, with Annette Funicello, Victor Mature, and Frank Zappa -- written by Nicholson and Bob Rafelson. He also directed a pretty good movie about basketball, Drive, He Said, starring Dern as a college coach, but of course Nicholson's fame came as an actor, not a writer or director.

In 1969, Nicholson was a last-minute replacement for Rip Torn in the motorcycles-and-drugs classic Easy Rider. His performance as a somewhat sotted Southern lawyer earned Nicholson rave reviews, and he became a major star playing the rebellious pianist in Five Easy Pieces with Karen Black. After Chinatown with Faye Dunaway, Carnal Knowledge with Ann-Margret, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with Louise Fletcher, Nicholson had solidified his on-screen persona as an itchy, grumpy, lovably sly smartass.

In the 1990s and 2000s Nicholson aged gracefully, playing a Marine cross-examined by Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, the titular executive/werewolf in Wolf with James Spader, a heartless bastard in As Good As It Gets with Helen Hunt, the sad-sack salesman of About Schmidt with Kathy Bates, Adam Sandler's live-in therapist in Anger Management, and the vile villain Costello in The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon.

Nicholson has also been impressive in occasional hammy but entertaining supporting roles. He played Barbra Streisand's hipster doofus neighbor in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever; the singing doctor who diagnosed that deaf, dumb, and blind kid in the rock opera Tommy; the hard-drinking astronaut who fell for Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment; and the superstar anchorman of Broadcast News with William Hurt and Holly Hunter.

Nicholson has a reputation as a playboy who enjoys fine wine, quality herb, and many beautiful women, but to dampen any exaggerated rumors he has explained that he has never had sex with more than two other people at the same time. He is also the Los Angeles Lakers' most famous season-ticket holder.

He is a longtime friend of character actor Harry Dean Stanton, who was best man when, in 1962, Nicholson married another struggling actor, Sandra Knight. Their marriage lasted only six years, and her career never went anywhere, but viewers who have seen Tower of London with Vincent Price have seen Knight's finest moment as an actress: She played a brief but gut-churning death scene on the rack.

Nicholson later had a 17-year romance with Anjelica Huston, who repeatedly looked the other way while he wandered, but she finally ended their relationship when Nicholson told her he had impregnated his daughter's best friend, Rebecca Broussard. After having two children with Broussard, Nicholson spent several years in the company of waifish actress Lara Flynn Boyle, another woman young enough to be his daughter.

In 1997, Nicholson was sued by prostitute Christine Sheehan, who alleged that Nicholson had refused to pay for services rendered and had instead assaulted her, and repeatedly smashed her head onto the floor of his Hollywood home. The lawsuit was settled with a substantial payment from Nicholson, but Sheehan later alleged that her injuries were worse than she had originally believed. At last report she was seeking an additional $500,000 from Nicholson.

Appears on the cover of:Entertainment Weekly, 14-Feb-2003, DETAILS: The Year's Hottest Odd Couple -- Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson in Anger Management (photo with Sandler)
Entertainment Weekly, 3-Jan-2003, DETAILS: Jack on Jack -- The King of Hollywood opens up about sex, money, fame, and the role of his life in About Schmidt